HongPong.com

The war on drugs continues to form a major pillar of state violence in America. I am glad Massachusetts is suspending cannabis prohibition less than two hours from now! But it is bittersweet.

I think of all the families ripped apart by sanctimonious, thuggish government agents, attorneys and judges because they believe, or at least pretend, that modes of consciousness tilted by chemicals are more of a danger than rupturing the social fabric with their program that was intended as a racist spear from the very beginning.

I think of all their coverups and lies, their sealed transcripts, their paid informants, their aircraft shell companies, hapless peripheral people socked with 20+ year sentences. The kids raised in rough streets, parents stripped by the State, school to prison pipeline, CCA prison profits.

I think of all the people addicted to heroin and crack cocaine transported by CIA-aligned networks since Dulles & OSS helped Chennault's Flying Tigers protect Chiang Kai-Shek's geopolitical interests. Heroin is still cheap as hell in this region, and banks are always able to smoothly continue money flows without netting any criminal charges.

I think of Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News, which protected him and then folded under "fake news" accusations from agency-friendly organs like the Washington Post, driving him ultimately to suicide, for daring to expose Iran-Contra. (In 2012 when we exposed the DRE program was drugging people in Minneapolis, of course only the "fake news" outlets would touch the story for weeks.)

And tonight I think of Philando Castile, now slandered in death by sleazy attorneys who blame what else, The Marijuanas, for somehow inciting Falcon Heights PD to kill him.

And I think of the slimy DoJ coverup specialists, who will paper over all of this for the benefit of the law enforcement and intelligence "communities" [sic], as they have for almost a century. They will never find the money, they will never hit the big guys. They are there to make sure that addiction is converted into cash, dropped into Wall Street. And not a damn thing more. They are all hiding, sniveling cowards, they cannot face real questions because they have no answers. The takedown of this bitter monster must continue.

Here is a sneak preview for everyone : North Dakota Governor Dalrymple claims "fake news" like documenting spraying water protectors with fire hoses in 20 degree weather led them to defeat on social media (video from drones banned by the FAA showed fires were not the target). Every time people stand up to abuses authorities will claim it's "fake news":
North Dakota governor says pipeline company ‘abdicated’ role in defending project: (Dec 9, Forum News Service)
State officials have been busy maintaining public safety in the face of a sophisticated public relations operation involving paid protesters, strategic advice from public relations professionals and an “army” of activists posting often misleading information, including “fake news,” that has shaped national media coverage, Dalrymple said.
“National media is killing us,” the governor said.
“There’s a new paradigm,” he said, referring to the influence of social media in molding public opinion. “I try to do what I can, but I’m no match for that organization. That’s a long-term challenge. That may be going on well after the pipeline is laid.”....
Some protesters also repeatedly provoked law enforcement officers to try to goad them into a response that would make law enforcement look bad on video that would be widely shared on social media sites, Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley said.
One notable example came Nov. 20, he said, when protesters refused to back away from a bridge and set fires. When responders used fire hoses to douse the flames, protesters could easily have moved back away from the spray, but didn’t, creating a misleading visual representation of the confrontation, Wrigley said.
Wrigley said he and Dalrymple, joined by Col. Michael Gerhart, superintendent of the North Dakota Highway Patrol, and Al Dohrmann, adjutant general of the state National Guard, as well as Ron Rauschenberger, Dalrymple’s chief of staff, watched a live video feed of the confrontation.
“The Native Americans are being used, absolutely being used, by these outside agitators,” Wrigley said. “The state of North Dakota is not in conflict with the Standing Rock tribe.”
[Also note "outside agitators" is a phrase from the 1950s, showing how dated their ideology is]
Many of the outlets named by the Washington Post "fake news" piece are speaking out and Yves Smith from Nakedcapitalism.com has prepared action for libel.
Hard line politicians like Dalrymple will keep naming organizations highlighting their misconduct as "fake news". So this is how the fake news moral panic will be weaponized for crackdowns.
See also: Washington Post Refuses to Retract Article Defaming Naked Capitalism and Other Sites
Please follow Unicorn Riot ( @ur_ninja) for frontline media - many examples of the type of hard primary sources that he's claiming are fake.
Also the North Dakota theatre gave many examples where local police routinely lied up to politicians and feds. There's not an internal way to really process their deception level except videos - that is one of few levers available for deterring police deception in internal vertical information flows within the government (and of course politicians are generally happy to accept the deceptions unless their hand is forced by public videos).
Hillary naturally is complaining about fake news (rather than, say, Trump's intense attacks on organized labor) even though she purveyed plenty of fake news to help achieve the political goal of invading Iraq.
[hat tip @xodanix3]
[...]

Let's all hold hands for a moment. After fear & loathing, I will vote for "STEIN and BARAKA" on the 2016 Massachusetts Ballot. Mass is hostile to minor parties & I want to support expanded choices, but I do not support parts of Green platform & positions.

Your decisions, to participate in this thing, if they let you, or to decline, are your own. I hope we can still be friends. If I were in a different state or life, I might not choose this. I doubt the idea that voting is an 'ethical act'. Tactical, sometimes yes. Ethical?

Did you notice intelligence agencies have already taken over this election? Feuding, leaking securocrats, the same Beltway/NoVA crowd that propagandized America into Iraq, are falsely portrayed as more important and credible than the public. Vote all you want; they will continue to gather power.

Support for Palestinian dignity is an important litmus test which the Democrats have failed on. Generally US politicians treat peoples like Palestinians, Haitians, American Indians and other people facing massive disadvantages in similar ways.

Is the core function of government merely enforcing violent and abusive claims against Indigenous people, stealing their land through fraudulent land title and currency systems, whether in Standing Rock/North Dakota or West Bank/Palestine?

Is the Blood in the Elevator the core of political science? Is the whole government just a system of violence assuring itself through hallucinated concepts and performative utterances that it all adds up?

[Specifically I do not agree with the Green Party platform backing the criminalization of sex workers, nor with Baraka's view on Syrian elections, nor the Green Party's amiability in some instances with far-right bigoted forces. I totally understand why anyone would refuse to support Greens over matters like this, but I want future Greens to have a ballot line in this state.]

The future is still unwritten, the book is not yet closed. Let the Pixies play us out...

I ran out of RAM researching this topic about the moment that I found the EU has *four* presidents. President of the European Council (since 1 December 2014, Donald Tusk), President of the European Commission (since 1 November 2014, Jean-Claude Juncker), President of the European Parliament (since 1 July 2014, Martin Schulz), Presidency of the Council of the European Union (since 1 January 2016, The Netherlands). I don't have time to plug in the links but I want to share this incomplete piece anyway.
The vibes around the Brexit situation are pretty toxic. But they are not in isolation. How many months ago was Scotland was basically polling to leave and fell a ways short, then the Scottish National Party swept out Labor, against Tory austerity, across the whole area. They've avoided total disaster but young people are fed up, and in London spend most of their money on rent. The National Health Service and other public services get gobbled up by SERCO, G4S and other all-encompassing contractor giants.
Beyond Pax Britannia, Italy has a major proposal that would reorganize its strange national system, and the Five Star comedian / right populist movement just got Rome. Its banking system is also said to be weak - who knew? Catalonia has been locked in a long conflict with its central government. France has been in a labor-driven social insurrection for what, a month now? France is like ~60% negative on the EU compared to Britain's ~50% according to one poll I saw.
10+% employment across the EU (which surely includes all precariat and bit work as a Job as the US does) with much higher youth unemployment is perpetual and structural and is a direct consequence of the EU's rigidity and sluggish, isolated decision cycle structure.
How many "remain" proponents have chosen to focus on how the EU makes legislation and budgets, the central functions of government? This next bit is kind of amazing - brace yourselves:
There are four legislative procedures through which Community acts can be adopted. Each begins with a proposal from the Commission, which the Commission may withdraw at any point before the legislation is finally adopted. Although the Commission has a monopoly in initiating legislation, the Council, European Parliament and Member States can suggest to the Commission that it table a proposal. This procedure is referred to in French as "l'initiative de l'initiative", which can be described as initiating the initiation of legislation. The Commission is not obliged to act on this request and remains the sole institution capable of proposing Community acts.
The four procedures ensure that the European Parliament is involved in the Community decision-making process to a greater or lesser extent.
Yes this is how it actually works, via http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV%3Al10119
And of course it is only available in a few languages. Great customer service here.
If this was how the US worked -- admittedly it's close, but it's like if ALEC and party apparatchiks had all the power of the US House, staffed entirely by the friends of Beltway regulars -- you can see how whole regions might switch over to seething, reactionary parochialism, with a far bigger violent fringe than we have in America today.
The European Commission, not the European Parliament, is the body that originates legislation. This is hugely important. It is designed to work like a ratchet. This has caused British conspiracy wags to claim that the EU was designed as the Soviet Politburo's German-powered counterpart, with an untouchable core deep state set to control everything for its nefarious purposes. The conspirators then of course trolled everyone by parking the rump parliament in a building obviously modeled on the Tower of Babel.
In the US, only the House of Representatives can originate budget legislation. The finance committees are controlled by legislators directly elected every 2 years. That is a pretty short line and a close circle. It isn't totally[...]

The big report I have been focused on for a month finally dropped. Thanks to the support of colleagues we have it out the door and people have a much better sense of the security state they might face at the 2016 Republican National Convention. I am disappointed as always that our limited resources on this planet go not to research, science or the arts but to the brutal bloatware of the National Special Security Events.
Full report: New Cleveland RNC Police & Military Docs: FEMA Base to Setup at NASA. Extra appendices are located here.
A trove of new documents exposes how Cleveland’s impending Republican National Convention will subject the public to a massive domestic military operation. Following decades of planning and millions of dollars spent, the RNC this July will amass into an unprecedented security state, constricting the constitutional rights of thousands of people.
As the panopticon descends on Cleveland, military forces will begin staging security operations at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, while other federal forces begin staffing a “Multi Agency Communications Center” (MACC), located at the International Exposition Center (IX) near the Hopkins International Airport.
The mechanics of America’s most distilled form of political lockdown, the National Special Security Event (NSSE), are spelled out in a series of posted PDFs, some from the Ohio Emergency Management Agency (these have since been taken down). NSSEs are massive security operations managed by the Secret Service, which activate many supporting federal and military agencies, such as Homeland Response Forces, and tactical units from state and local police departments across the region.
Large event planning has evolved dramatically since the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention marshaled massive police, federal and military support. NSSEs were defined and systematized as perpetually repeating large activations by President Bill Clinton in 1998's Presidential Decision Directive 62 (PDD-62). In 2016, the NSSE framework remixes the Incident Command System (ICS) for civilian law enforcement aided by FEMA, along with a "Dual Status" Joint Task Force military command.
Please check out the rest of the story. It's 3000+ words but the Moar You Know... Here is a video my colleagues at Unicorn Riot produced with Kris Hermes about NSSEs.
src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/162275481" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen>
Author Kris Hermes Discusses National Special Security Events (NSSE) from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.
Here is my 27 minute rundown: https://vimeo.com/171349422
src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/171349422" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen>
2016 RNC Exposed: New Cleveland police & military docs: FEMA base to setup at NASA from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.
The November 2010 story that I published both here and was on the Late Great Twin Cities Indymedia server, is helpful. It took me from April to November to put that thing together -- fortunately this year's project, with the help of friends, only took a month.
Here is the 2010 intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaacTx9oi1A
width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SaacTx9oi1A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
Also in 2012 I went on the Alex Jones show a couple times, mostly because of the Drug Recognition Evaluator (DRE) lawsuit. The notes from that appearance are here, which I am including because I used that situation to educate the audience about all of this stuff. (Relevant side note: On April 1 2016 Chief U.S. District Judge, District of Minnesota, John R. Tunheim, tossed the DRE case and ruled it was okay for cops to drug people under guardianship if they fail to lay out their life circumstances to a random drug-wielding cop. Seems legit.)
Anyway I am glad to be keeping busy on the path of weird truths no ma[...]

Al Giordano is a seasoned journalist with a background in political activism, having worked for years with Abbie Hoffman, against nuclear power and US intervention in Nicaragua, as Rolling Stone noted, among various undertakings. The wildly corrupt Mexican bank Banamex, now part of Citigroup, tried to silence his work in court but failed. In 2000 he launched one of my favorite websites, NarcoNews, reporting the grim realities of a corrupt and sprawling war on drugs with continental scope. (which has been on the permanent sidebar here for who knows how long). He also has organized the School of Authentic Journalism to train young journalists.
More recently, outside of the NarcoNews project, Al has been unyielding in pointing out the shortcomings of Sen. Bernie Sanders' primary campaign and the activities of his supporters. When I first noticed this I was a bit surprised since I think of Hillary Clinton as the quintessential establishment, pro-war-on-drug politician, but I appreciated that Giordano was sticking to the facts. He is very, very good at predicting primary election results, although he was wrong about the 2016 Michigan Democratic primary.
I was able to briefly engage Giordano tonight on Allen Richardson's Facebook post about Arizona results and get him to spell out a little bit more of his logic for how, why and when Sanders fell so short among many important segments of the US primary voting public. He noted that Sanders' vote nine years ago against Sen. Ted Kennedy's immigration reform bill didn't help matters, and also has called attention to the lack of deep training which contrasts to the more thorough Camp Obama trainings as documented here in summer 2007.
DF: I am curious what strategy could have worked better for Sanders if we could rewind the campaign time period Al Giordano, or do Sanders' inescapable liabilities stretch back to the 1990s or before? He kinda seemed like a more hacky version of Paul Wellstone before the campaign started.. i definitely agree w you there was never a good training camp that could have put the volunteers on a better footing as you have pointed out lately.
Giordano: Yes, one of the things that distinguished Paul Wellstone was his Camp Wellstone trainings, which are still happening. One is coming up in May in Virginia: http://www.wellstone.org/events/camp-wellstone-virginia-civic-engagement...
Sanders blew it with most black voters when he kept running against Obama's record and putting Obama haters like Cornel West out there to be a surrogate. He blew it with Latino voters when he had no remorse or good explanation for his 2007 vote vs Ted Kennedy's immigration reform vote. Clinton voted wrong on Iraq but had the sense to reflect, say it was a mistake and apologize for it. Sanders just really shows no reflection at all about himself - a key warning sign to many people when white men do it.
DF: thanks for the concise explanation, that seems pretty logical.
Giordano: Instead Sanders made himself a magnet for the Obama haters, readers of the Intercept, same bunch of people who said he was "Bush in blackface" and other racial slurs, West who called him a "niggerized president." And those people sucked up so much oxygen that the organizer left simply said "gross" and didn't want to be associated with it. Then Clinton smartly pivoted to hugging Obama (after initially trying to distance herself). When Bernie said in January that Clinton was hugging Obama "to pander to black people" that ruined him with most of that demographic, that which loves the president. When he said "you can be a progressive or you can be a moderate but you can't be both" that purity trolling ruined him with many on the left who rejected that kind of fundamentalism over the years. When his people attacked John Lewis and Dolores Huerta - some even attacked Liz Warren for remaining neutral! - the wheels came totally off the bus. The rest has just been mopping up since then.
[...]

Hope everyone's doing well out there. I'm aiming to update HongPong.com to Drupal 8 within a month or so. Lately I've been doing more work with WordPress than Drupal. Neither one is perfect. I must wish a happy 15th birthday to the Drupal community since the software was named and released under the GPL a decade and a half ago. Hard to believe I've been generally in that orbit for 2/3rds of the time! [I registered on Drupal.org 9 years 8 months ago, and Wordpress.org in June 2005]

Having been in and out of Wordpress and Drupal development for a decade, there is no perfect approach or methodology for a good ecosystem that minimizes hassle.

In the last year Drupal.org got a polished continuous integration system set up so that git patches are pushed through testing on several different sql & PHP versions. I think a major push to modernize wordpress.org plugin support thread management and introducing CI ( meshing this with github or a free software equivalent if necessary) would help plugin maintainers deal with API changes much more effectively. It's not possible to attach patches through the threads and that should change, first of all. [after all, has it really changed in a decade? Does anyone benefit from threads that get locked quickly, when the same problems recur year after year etc?]

Also in Drupal world the community is the ultimate steward of the fate of modules while in Wordpress the authors have more exhaustive control. When authors abandon their plugins, if others could claim plugins that are idle this would result in fewer, better plugins. Drupal modules are not allowed to promote their author's wares either, which might be worth considering, although perhaps this pesky internal advertising system helps keeps more devs afloat. It's quite a contrast to Drupal.

Also as complexity increased Drupal forked off into Backdrop CMS, which is a lightweight, slightly modified for performance and easier maintainability with static files. Wordpress Lite with a smaller API and mostly similar theme layer could work well as the core expands into trickier areas like REST implementation.

Lastly I think that the Dependency Injection / Service Container system pioneered by Symfony and implemented in Drupal 8 would be good for Wordpress to look at. It would let people knock out the code areas that they need for very custom apps (i.e. Buddypress) while still maintaining a lean core API. It would be great in the long run if Wordpress 5 or whatever were totally rewritten to have a more modern structure than it has now... but only with good CI would the ecosystem keep up.

My colleagues with the new activist oriented news service UnicornRiot.ninja interviewed me about encryption and privacy/security and it went pretty well overall. Check out the video and please support their efforts!! (original post) Deprogram airs every Wednesday night around 8PM central.

After the 12 topic rundown and music video, we had two interviews. In the first interview, we were graced with the presence of Kanahus Manuel to discuss Indigenous environmental issues in so-called Canada.

The Ford Foundation is a heavy hitter in nonprofit world. Originally it was set up so that shares of Ford Motor Co. wouldn't get so dispersed through inheritances dissolving the fortune. There was a lot of political intrigue later on that is worth checking into, but I won't get into all of it here. Suffice it to say they are a core primary player in this kind of world.
The leader just sent out a pretty big missive and it really discussed how the Ford Foundation is all about protecting capitalism, which struck me as a little off the normal tone of reforms and whatnot that they usually are hooked into. If you want to understand the role of big foundations in American politics this is a handy document.
hat tip to B.S. for catching this. Also I don't really think M.L.King Jr. was a huge fan of Capitalism but hey...
Source: http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3f89269c6132144b6f1c5ce78&id=9830b1...
Dear Friends,
As I begin my third year at the Ford Foundation’s helm, I am reminded of how privileged I am—and we all are—to serve this institution.
For my colleagues and me, these past 15 months have entailed both deep introspection about this privilege and broad exploration of how we can harness and direct it to advance our mission. For us, what has unfolded is a process of discovery and renewal that has led us to reorganize our programming around the global crisis of inequality. We call this ongoing renewal FordForward.
Next month, I’ll be sharing more details about our thematic areas and the specific grantmaking lines of work through which we will carry out our programming. I look forward to beginning a new phase for the foundation that builds on Ford’s rich and varied history.
Since sharing the news of our focus on inequality, I’ve been encouraged—and, candidly, surprised—by the overwhelming response. As the chasm of inequality widens and deepens in communities around the world, we seem to have struck a nerve.
Yet while inequality certainly merits attention and effort, some have fairly pointed out a tension—if not a contradiction—between philanthropic efforts to address inequality and the structural economic realities that make it possible for foundations to exist at all.
The origins of modern philanthropy
This tension stretches back more than a century. In 1889, the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie composed his “Gospel of Wealth,” a short essay with far-reaching impact. It is, in many ways, the intellectual charter of modern philanthropy, and its basic precepts remain the underpinning of US giving and, in turn, have greatly influenced an era of burgeoning philanthropic enterprise around the world.
Carnegie articulated his philosophy at a time when inequality had reached unprecedented levels in the United States. In an age of excess, titans of industry enjoyed lives of startling opulence; ordinary people endured low wages, dangerous working conditions, and overcrowded, unhealthy living quarters. He argued—as some still do—that inequality on this scale is an unavoidable condition of the free market system and that philanthropy is one effective means of ameliorating the conditions the market produces.
Today, in this new period of rising inequality, it is timely that we reflect on the principles of philanthropy as originally set forth in Carnegie’s influential “Gospel of Wealth”—to consider to what degree they point to the realities and responsibilities of philanthropy in our time, and to openly acknowledge and confront the tension inherent in a system that perpetuates vast differences in privilege and then tasks the privileged with improving the system.
To be sure, philanthropy today is broader and more diverse than ever before. Its tens of thousands of individual practitioners around the world follow a variety of approaches, as intentional and unique as they are. A[...]

It can't be emphasized enough that the global debt complex we are all trapped in is reproduced daily by sophisticated (and in many cases quite old & deteriorated) computers. There is no magic man behind the curtain, just a bunch of nasty computer systems whose authority is enforced by central banking authorities like the Troika, IMF, World Bank, Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve System.
This is one of the biggest stories at this level I have seen in ages, perhaps ever. Fascinating story very worth reading: A secret lolcat team in Greece's finance ministry hacked into their own EU-controlled systems and had a parallel financial network ready to go, but it all got wound down. Apparently FM Varoufakis resigned as a result of the plan being halted - and overall it was a pretty cool plan under dire national circumstances of emergency survival vs austerity.
Varoufakis reveals cloak and dagger 'Plan B' for Greece, awaits treason charges - Telegraph;
A secret cell at the Greek finance ministry hacked into the government computers and drew up elaborate plans for a system of parallel payments that could be switched from euros to the drachma at the "flick of a button" .
The revelations have caused a political storm in Greece and confirm just how close the country came to drastic measures before premier Alexis Tsipras gave in to demands from Europe's creditor powers, acknowledging that his own cabinet would not support such a dangerous confrontation.
Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister, told a group of investors in London that a five-man team under his control had been working for months on a contingency plan to create euro liquidity if the European Central Bank cut off emergency funding to the Greek financial system, as it in fact did after talks broke down and Syriza called a referendum.
People really need to pay more attention to the crappy computers running the whole financial system, see also very important here: Bank IT, Grexit, and Systemic Risk | naked capitalism - lots of gory details:
On the IT front, the challenge is vastly larger due to the state of financial firm IT systems. We intend to return to this topic, because we see bank IT systems as an unrecognized source of systemic risk. They are required to run to mission critical standards: enormous transaction volumes, extremely high demands for accuracy of end output, high uptimes. Yet the code base is an agglomeration, with many important operations relying in meaningful ways on legacy systems. Thus, as our expert with relevant experience stressed, changes that seem simple are anything but.
This is precisely why it is so important to understand these systems and come up with intermediate replacements, as your local version of the ECB is always waiting to make its next move for artificial austerity & assorted lethal games all taking place inside these computers…
More: Reports Of Secret Drachma Plots Leave Tsipras Facing Fresh Crisis | Zero Hedge, Syriza "Rebels" Planned To Ransack Greek Mint, Seize Cash Reserves, Arrest Central Bank Governor | Zero Hedge.
Varoufakis claims had approval to plan parallel banking system | News | ekathimerini.com
Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed that he was authorized by Alexis Tsipras last December to look into a parallel payment system that would operate using wiretapped tax registration numbers (AFMs) and could eventually work as a parallel banking system, Kathimerini has learned.
In a teleconference call with members of international hedge funds that was allegedly coordinated by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Varoufakis claimed to have been given the okay by Tsipras last December – a month before general elections that [...]

Seems like an intense week for economic crises is brewing: Greek banks will be closed till July 6 and also China's stock market is tumbling, Japan down today as well. Who knows how much bad sovereign debt lies in random Japanese or Chinese banks? Credit default swaps or other derivatives? The Chinese "equities bubble" happens to really be cracking the same week as Greece's deal runs out and the biggest IMF payment default ever is about to hit the books.

The massive debt complex only escalated by the post 2007 bailout. It's like the financial equivalent of 'entangling alliances' in WWI. The global aggregate demand slowdown continues. Puerto Rico is also struggling with systemic debt. None of this stuff got solved, central bank intervention, bond purchases and printing only can paper over some holes in the situation. More so than usual, *brace yourselves*

.. http://bloomberg.comhttp://zerohedge.com - probably reasonable places to start monitoring developments - the zerohedge sidebar of recommended sites has some very informative ones as well. I ain't got the time to get into all this stuff…

Over at WTFRLY.com there is a big roundup article getting put together as we speak.

If anyone is interested in an alternative economic tool, drupal.org/project/ices Integral Community Exchange System provides both timebanking and mutual aid / need want listings. (GPL free software license, tweak as you like)

If secret federal aviation is the Big Lebowski, Bristow is the rug that really ties the room together.
It's been thrilling to watch one of my favorite topics, aviation in covert operations, hit the bigtime over the last few news cycles. A few tweets about suspicious plane hovering over Baltimore 'disturbances' registered to a ghostly "NG Research" at a Bristow, Virginia PO Box cued the story. The FBI conceding to Washington Post that it was their flight set the stage for this. These stories have quietly been leaching out for years. As far back as 2003 (or 2006 in WIRED) references to small aircraft doing domestic surveillance have been popping up. After the Boston Marathon bombing, a small aircraft was traced to the same Bristow VA cluster. Today the story hit turbo with a big AP story, FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities, but there are lots more to find because the AP didn't really go outside of Bristow. You'll find plenty of N Numbers to snoop on below - and cool new tracking techniques too!! Quote of the year?
The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government's involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI's request because the companies' names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.
In my own scoping in the last week or so it appears that these shell company registration were mostly set up around 2010 or 2011, making this an Obama operation through and through. I apologize for not tipping yall more quickly to this impending development but I have been too busy!
And now! Grassley presses FBI for answers on mysterious surveillance flights | TheHill (June 2 2015)
/// UPDATE 2 - Weds 6/3 10PM :At a talk in Eden Prairie MN tonight according to attendees, a major NSA whistleblower, Bill Binney, said that material from the aircraft could quite likely be going into a program like the National Security Agency's "TREASURE MAP" which was publicized in late 2014. (TREASURE MAP PDF - Cryptome - you will want to see this LOL - also VentureBeat) . There should be video from Binney event later - wild! Also FVX Research T-shirts are now available and there is a spoof website full of stock photos I have to admit I fell for. Reddit suspects deadmau5 and Kim Dotcom are involved. FVX running gag tangents FTW ///
/// UPDATE 1: Two network affiliates covered the story (VIDEO): KSTP talked to ACLU-MN http://kstp.com/news/stories/s3813587.shtml & WCCO interviewed Sam Richards: http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/06/02/secret-aerial-fbi-program-uncov... Strib revisited the story http://www.startribune.com/mystery-surveillance-plane-that-circled-twin-... ///
This story shows that secret airlines are becoming an obsolete method for the [deep] state, because with the Internet and planespotters it becomes possible to observe and end-run around the secrecy of the networks, as the last big wave of awareness around secret detainee flights in the Bush years really revealed (though mostly in Eurasia, not North America). (2007 Cryptome Story and Category:Alleged CIA pilots - SourceWatch)
MadCowProd.com by Daniel Hopsicker has been a mainstay on the topic for many years, and his work on Barry Seal (Adler Berriman Seal) may have been ripped off to produce Tom Cruise's new film MENA. Since 2007 Barry Seal has served as something like the Spirit Animal of HongPong.com, and I wish the best for Hopsicker to get his due compensation, but I am also glad the sto[...]